The Stealth Dragon

A Washington Stealth Fan Blog

This project is maintained by tfitch

Stealth vs Edmonton Rush March 25th Review

March 25, 2007
Author: tfitch

It was more than I expected. My first guess was going to be 13-10, then I changed it to my prediction of 13-9. I would have been really happy with that result. So winning 14-7, I’m stoked.

We’ve won five in a row. Everyone is floating on cloud nine it feels like. I went to the Season Ticket Holder autograph session after the game and everyone is in such a good mood. Everything is clicking, the offense is pouring it on and the defense is shutting everyone down. Curtis Hodgson told me that on TV Ryan Powell guaranteed the victory for the Lumberjax last night. I don’t know how hard we hit RP in the head that he forgot the game from a week ago, but to guarantee a victory and then not score a goal. Bad move.

The offense isn’t ever starting out strong, the games are always close at the half or end of the 3rd quarter, but by the end of the game we’re winning and even doubling people up. The best part, we don’t have a threat to shutdown! We have an offense, not a player. Shutdown Rosy, and Zywicki will light you up for 5 and 4. Shift on to Zywicki and Rosy or Doyle will eat you up. We’re bad news for everyone in the West, except for freakin’ Colorado. They put out a defense of Gallant, Sims and Moss, I’m blanking on the 4th defender. But they can cover all our shooters. Which is why they’re 10-2 right now. We don’t have to face them until the last weekend of the regular season. So we’ll keep cruising and getting ready for them until then. Anyways, Zywicki might be able to pull of a Offensive player of the week with his performance tonight. But I’m not sure the league will give it to the Stealth twice in a row. Rochester had a good game this week, someone must have put up good number, but no other scores from this weekend’s games indicated a noteworthy performance.

On defense we carried over our performance from the 2nd half last night to the first half tonight. At the half we were up 6-3. So that’s 3 goals in the first half tonight and 1 in the 2nd half last night. That’s 4 goals over the span of a game. No one’s ever done that. Edmonton’s goals in the 3rd quarter were kinda trashy, knocking in loose rebounds. So those weren’t goals in the set offense where we shut them down.

I felt Edmonton shredded our Man Down defense. I am kinda wrong, they were 3 for 8. But they started out 2 for 3, so that stuck in my mind as things going wrong there. The refs were a crew that I don’t like and the way they made calls to start the game it was very tight. It seemed to loosen up later on, but some stuff was getting called that I hadn’t seen called in the past month. We were able to convert 5 out of 8 on our Man Up, which is a fabulous conversion rate. And we had a cool Shorthanded goal by Curtis Hodgson catching a full field clearing pass from Hawks and beating Palidwor through the 5 hole.

Hustle ended up being the difference in the game. The Shots on Goal were about even, but we got 62 loose balls and the Rush only got 48. Those extra possessions turned in to points. Palidwor was off his game tonight, or more like his game in the first half of the season while in NY. Shots kept getting past him. He gave up twice as many goals as Cos gave up on the same number of shots. Cosmo is making a late run at Goalie of the Year the way he’s playing in March. Well, he’ll definitely win Goalie of the Month.

This week we enjoy the 5 wins in a row and being the hottest team in the league. Next weekend we get some fresh meat and play an Arizona team that will be looking to solidify their 2nd place ranking. It’ll be fun to think about the possibilities from that game during this week.

Edit: No way Zywicki is Offensive Player of the week. John Tavares put up 7g and 6a with Buffalo beating Colorado. Much better and more productive than Zywicki’s numbers.